Audible Unveils AI-Powered Search Feature in Testing Phase

Amazon’s Audible is testing “Maven,” an AI-powered search feature that provides personalized audiobook recommendations, which is available to roughly half of US users.

Amazon owns the audiobook company Audible. On Wednesday, the company said it is testing an AI-powered search feature to help users narrow down their search for audiobooks.  Some Audible customers in the U.S. can now start interacting with “Maven,” the company’s new personal recommendation expert, who makes book suggestions based on what users ask for.

When a user types in a question in natural language, Maven will give them personalized suggestions from Audible’s library of almost one million titles. For example, “I’m looking for a positive fiction book with a female lead.”

Maven works on the web, iOS, and Android. The feature will be available to about half of Audible’s U.S. customers across all membership plans, the company said in a blog post. For now, it is only available for a “subset” of the audiobook library.

Like all beta products, Audible will keep changing it. Audible did not specify which AI models powered the feature. Someone from the company said that Maven uses “the strengths of multiple models” and will “continuously evaluate” as models get better.

Businesses also use AI in other ways. In addition to the announcement of the Maven launch, the company revealed that it is testing AI-generated collections and reviews.

The first mentioned feature is intriguing as it could potentially serve as Audible’s response to Spotify‘s AI-generated playlists.

Audible users are reportedly listening to thousands of audiobooks with AI voices, according to the news. Creative people are angry about this because they believe robots will take over audiobook narrators’ jobs.

As of May, more than 40,000 books were marked as having an AI narrator, and that number has probably gone up since then.